What shopping cart software does Hands-on Web Hosting recommend?
Since
2000, Hands-on Web Hosting has used and recommended the X-Cart Gold product
by QualiTeam. With more than 700 X-Cart Gold shopping carts hosting with Hands-on
Web Hosting, a few dozen X-Cart Pro shopping carts and more than 100 users
using the LiteCommerce software also developed by Qualiteam, Hands-on Web
Hosting has the proven track record to host your site or shopping cart in
compliance to their software requirements.
Hands-on
Web Hosting has made a name for itself in the X-Cart Gold and Qualiteam LiteCommerce
software. We were one of only 3 hosting companies recommended by X-Cart to
host their product from their beginnings and are listed in their manual and
on their web site as a viable hosting solution. Qualiteam started their own
hosting company in 2008 however until that time Hands-on Web Hosting was also
hosting all of Qualiteam's clients. Through the "Ready-2-Go Hosting"
program offered on the X-Cart website, customers could purchase their software
and automatically sign up for hosting with Hands-on Web Hosting. When X-Cart
launched their own hosting solution, the Ready-2-Go Hosting program ended.
We
are still strong X-Cart believers and we still host more than 700 X-Cart Gold
Shopping carts, however the program is not for everyone. You will need knowledge
of PHP, Smarty and HTML if you wish to customize the look and feel of your
store. If you don't have the skills necessary to edit your site, we recommend
NetVision Web Services as they have
modified many of our clients shopping carts and have even developed custom
applications for Hands-on's Shopping Carts.
To
say that the Interspire
Shopping Cart software will blow away the competition is an understatement
of the greatest kind. We have been working with Interspire for most of 2008
and it is our new shopping cart of choice. When X-Cart made their debut in
2000 it was the best shopping cart on the web. The price is still very affordable,
however often, in order to get the product to do the things you want, you
have to EXTEND the software with custom code (expensive) or with additional
modules (not cheap either). At the end of the day you've spent another $1000
and still haven't developed the website!
Interspire took a different approach. Give EVERYTHING to the user. No need for 3rd party modules to integrate shipping, or to make the program usable for a company with more than 5 customers. Interspire inherently supports pretty much every 3rd party module that you would purchase if using X-Cart Gold. You don't need to know any HTML, everything is done with drag and drop. Want a new theme/template? No problem, click a button and up pops your new site. It's probably one of the easiest shopping carts that we've ever used and we've been using them since 1994!
We have experienced a few limitations with the software such as not being able to edit customer information and also variants for products (such as Tshirt sizes and colors etc). For some reason they made it so that you could not EDIT the variants and instaed if you have a new size or color you want to introduce, you must delete the variant and re-add with the new options. A little cumbersome, but it does work. They come out with new versions every month, so hopefully this will be addressed in a new release shortly.
Give their demo a try, you will not be disappointed. Hands-on Web Hosting is fully compatible with the Interspire Shopping Cart!
Need
something free? There's a few to choose from; osCommerce, ZenCart and Magento!
osCommerce and ZenCart can be installed automatically from inside the Control
Panel that Hands-on Web Hosting offers to their clients. 
With
just a few simple clicks, the store is up and running. Magento, while becoming
very popular, still requires manual installation at this time. We have noticed
some permissions issues with some of our customers when installing right out
of the box so it will need some tweaking once you unpack the file on the server.
Again, just like with X-Cart, don't forget your programmer - we use, and recommend,
NetVision Web Services.
As always, if you have any questions, please contact our support team at http://support.handsonwebhosting.com